Not that I'm for DRM - I'm definitely not - but a quick search for O'Reilly books on a couple different torrent and filesharing sites comes up with gigs of ebooks from them.

They *EASILY* show up.

R.
==

Most of those books where there well before ereaders became popular and they are all in PDF, which all come from a different aspect of the scene. Try finding a mobi or epub version of one of their popular books. PDF's are not ebooks btw, they have been around for decades both with and without DRM. Most pirated PDF books come from paper books or publishers, not from drm decryption.

Its similar to saying pirated movies and music come from media payed for by consumers, they don't, they almost never do. Thats simply not the way media gets into piracy circles. The same is true for books.

...
PDF's are not ebooks btw, they have been around for decades both with and without DRM.

I disagree with this statement. All the O'Reilly books that I've seen, whether in PDF or epub format (and yes, they're out there), began life as a printed, bound book. And most of those that I've seen are not scans either. They can be brought into a PDF editor and manipulated as regular text.

The "P" in PDF stands for portable, btw.

As an aside, if PDF weren't considered a valid ebook format, you probably wouldn't see a PDF subforum right here on mobileread.

I disagree with this statement. All the O'Reilly books that I've seen, whether in PDF or epub format (and yes, they're out there), began life as a printed, bound book. And most of those that I've seen are not scans either. They can be brought into a PDF editor and manipulated as regular text.

The "P" in PDF stands for portable, btw.

As an aside, if PDF weren't considered a valid ebook format, you probably wouldn't see a PDF subforum right here on mobileread.

R.
==

That simply proves my point, that these files you are finding are not from consumers uploading cracked files.

Ok, I figured I'd test your theory out. Logic says, if the pirated copies of stuff are all older or homebrew with few exceptions, then anything I grab should be homebrew. I ran a search for oreilly in the pirate bay, grabbed the first ebook I saw and downloaded it. Upon opening it up, I was greated with a PDF that was not simply a scan, and the meta info seemed to match up with that of the legal O'Reilly ebooks I have. If that is such a rare occurrence, how come I hit it on the first try?

Ok, I figured I'd test your theory out. Logic says, if the pirated copies of stuff are all older or homebrew with few exceptions, then anything I grab should be homebrew. I ran a search for oreilly in the pirate bay, grabbed the first ebook I saw and downloaded it. Upon opening it up, I was greated with a PDF that was not simply a scan, and the meta info seemed to match up with that of the legal O'Reilly ebooks I have. If that is such a rare occurrence, how come I hit it on the first try?

Thats doesn't prove a thing. But again, as I said that doesn't mean it came from a customer.

I love O'Reilly and their DRM free ebooks. Indeed, just after buying an Opus, my very first ebook purchase was an O'Reilly ePub title as a token of my appreciation and encouragement. Their ebooks seem a bit pricey though.

Thats doesn't prove a thing. But again, as I said that doesn't mean it came from a customer.

With respect, Zorz, you stated that "those non drm'ed books never show up in ebook piracy circles". One counter-example is sufficient to invalidate this assertion, and this has been provided. So-called "pirates" have no respect for "the good guys" of the publishing business. You only have to look at the number of Baen books that are distributed illegally to see that.

Well Zorz, either you don't try to find it hard enough or smart enough.. I can find pretty much a lot of ebook by O'Reilly in the darknet circulation. Heck, I even find that one guy here at mobileread linking his epub format O'Reilly book to his personal website. Maybe the guy didn't have intention to share it illegally, and i can't remember what he wants to do with thread he started (I think it's related with epub formatting and his ereader device).

Beside that, yes, pdf is the most common format that will show up when you search, but epub and some chm format is also out there in the darknet.

And according to your thread title which suggest that drm is useless because O'Reilly books never appear in ebook piracy circles, I don't think that proves it at all. I think that (and like many people here who have same opinion) when ebook is reasonably priced, have good quality and formatting, no stupid geographic restriction, and convenienced to purchased, people will eventually buy it in legit way, rather than have to go through the hoops of finding pirated ebook. That way, drm will be useless because it just give an unnecessary inconvenience

Sounds to me like this is just a bald assertion with zero evidence. (On a web forum no less? I'm shocked. Truly. )

EDIT: Not just a bald assertion, a patently false one as well. It took me about 60 seconds to find a torrent of a 3gb set of O'Reilly books. Somehow I doubt that downloading it would qualify as a legal act.

We don't know O'Reilly's numbers, we don't know if sales and/or revenues and/or profits would go up or down if they added DRM.

In addition, what works for O'Reilly may not work for others. They're happy to write off unauthorized downloads as a type of promotional cost. Meanwhile, O'Reilly pays a low royalty rate (10%) aren't reimbursing authors for possible "lost sales," and has a tech-savvy and sensitive audience. All of these are factors largely unique to them and their business model.

In contrast, a publisher like Penguin, with a large multinational business and dozens of imprints, and authors with more substantial royalties who will get much more irked by lost sales, may just as easily have bad results as good without DRM.

The only thing O'Reilly shows is that for their business, they are willing to take the hit. Perhaps this extends to other publishers, perhaps not, their experience isn't really proof either way.

In addition, what works for O'Reilly may not work for others. They're happy to write off unauthorized downloads as a type of promotional cost. Meanwhile, O'Reilly pays a low royalty rate (10%) aren't reimbursing authors for possible "lost sales," and has a tech-savvy and sensitive audience. All of these are factors largely unique to them and their business model.

Also probably a customer base where a reasonable proportion of the sales are corporate. Why go out of my way to get the free version if I'm not paying for it anyway, my company is?

The PDF versions of O'Reilly's ebooks have your name embedded on each page to discourage people from making them available to other people. That's probably why most of the O'Reilly books you see on the darknets are scanned books rather than copied ebooks (note, I haven't checked myself, just going by what a previous poster says). I do have a number of O'Reilly books, so I really can't imagine someone putting such a PDF up for everyone to access.